Engineering Commons^™

Impact Of Irrigation On Vulnerability Of Winter Wheat Under Extreme Climate Change Scenario: A Case Study Of North China Plain, Yulian Gao, Lin Wang, Yaojie Yue

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

An inadequate understanding of the impacts of adaptation countermeasures tends to exaggerate the adverse e􀀀ects of climate change on agricultural systems. Motivated by proposing reasonable climate change adaptation countermeasures, the present study applied the EPIC model to quantify the impacts of climate change and irrigation changes with future socioeconomic development on agricultural production. Winter wheat yield losses using dynamic irrigation parameters in the North China Plain (NCP) from 2010 to 2099 under a scenario coupling climate change and future socioeconomic development (RCP8.5-SSP3), and those under an extreme climate change scenario (RCP8.5), were simulated. Results show that EPIC model demonstrates superior …

Climate Change And The Law Of National Security Adaptation, Mark P. Nevitt

Faculty Articles

The Department of Defense (DoD) is the largest employer in the world, owns and operates an enormous global real estate portfolio, and emits more Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) than many nations. Entrusted with the national security, the DoD is now threatened by a new enemy—climate change. Climate change imperils national security infrastructure while undermining the military’s capacity to respond to climate-driven disasters at home and abroad. However, legal scholarship has yet to address what I call “the law of national security adaptation” and related questions. For example, how do environmental and climate change laws apply to the U.S. military? What laws …

Using Remote Sensing Technologies In Relocating Lubrak Village And Visualizing Flood Damages, Ronan Wallace

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As weather patterns change across the world, there are communities impacted by climate change that are left unnoticed. In the Himalayan mountain range, communities have suffered, experiencing an increase in flash flooding and droughts. For Lubrak Village in Lower Mustang, the community faces the threats of flash flooding. Over the last ten years, the amount of flash flooding has increased, occurring more than once each monsoon season. After every flood, concrete-like sediment is left behind, hardening across the riverbed and increasing its elevation. As the riverbed elevation increases, this sediment encroaches on Lu-brak Village’s agricultural fields and ancient mud buildings, …

Editorial: Coastal Flooding: Modeling, Monitoring, And Protection Systems, Valentina Prigiobbe, Clint Dawson, Yao Hu, Hatim O. Sharif, Navid Tahvildari

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Coastal flooding has received significant attention in recent years due to future sea-level rise (SLR) projections and intensification of precipitation, which will exacerbate frequent flooding, coastal erosion, and eventually create permanently inundated low-elevation land. Coastal governments will be forced to implement measures to manage risk on the population and infrastructure and build protection systems to mitigate or adapt to the negative impacts of flooding. Research in this area is required to establish holistic frameworks for timely and accurate flooding forecast and design of protection systems.

Quo Vadis Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo: A Future Outlook For Two Of The Caribbean Basin's Largest Lakes, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki

Publications and Research

Lakes Azuei (LA) and Enriquillo (LE) on Hispaniola Island started expanding in 2005 and continued to do so until 2016. After inundating large swaths of arable land, submerging a small community, and threatening to swallow a significant trade route between the Dominican Republic and Haiti; worries persisted at how far this seemingly unstoppable expansion would go. The paper outlines the approach to a look forward to answer this question vis-à-vis climate change scenarios developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). It uses numerical representations of the two lakes, and it examines how the lakes might evolve, deploying three …

Bibliometric Survey On Effect Of Climate Factors On Spread Of Coronavirus (Covid-19), Seema Patil, Jay Makwana, Manish Attri

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The new SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19 has spread quickly around the globe since it was first reported in Wuhan city of China, in December 2019 subsequent to being contracted from a zoonotic source. The main focus of this bibliometric survey is to recognize the few studies which have upheld the epidemiological hypothesis that the effect of climatic factors is playing a crucial role in the spreading of COVID-19. The analysis is done on the basis of 412 documents such as journals, articles, editorials, short surveys and some review papers. The United States contributes to the maximum number of publications followed by the …

Bibliometric Survey On Effects Of Climate Change On Incidences Of Infectious Diseases, Seema Harshad Patil, Yatharth Jain, Vedant Marathe

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

^{For understanding the influx of Infectious Diseases, research of climate change and its effects pertaining to the diseases is important. The motive of this bibliometric survey is to understand the research which has been carried out regarding the aforementioned topics. This paper summarizes the research in the 21st Century from 2001 to present. We conducted this analysis using tools such as Gephi, Researchgate, Scopus, ScienceScape, Google Scholar and Mapchart. This Bibliometric Survey on “Effects of Climate Change on Infectious Diseases” showed that maximum publications are articles. These publications are from conferences and journals related to Environmental Science. The United States …}

Historical Trends In Air Temperature, Precipitation, And Runoff Of A Plateau Inland River Watershed In North China, Along Zhang, Ruizhong Gao, Xixi Wang, Tingxi Liu, Lijing Fang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Understanding historical trends in temperature, precipitation, and runoff is important but incomplete for developing adaptive measures to climate change to sustain fragile ecosystems in cold and arid regions, including the Balagaer River watershed on the Mongolian Plateau of northeast China. The objective of this study was to detect such trends in this watershed from 1959 to 2017. The detection was accomplished using a Mann-Kendall sudden change approach at annual and seasonal time scales. The results indicated that the abrupt changes in temperature preceded that in either runoff or precipitation; these abrupt changes occurred between 1970 and 2004. Significant (α = …

Thermal Analysis And Post Construction Verification, Cormac Flood, Lloyd Scott

Articles

Purpose – The residential sector in Ireland accounted for 25 per cent of energy related CO2 emissions in 2016 through burning fossil fuels, a major contributor to climate change. In support of Ireland’s CO2 reduction targets, the existing housing stock could contribute greatly to the reduction of space-heating energy demand through retrofit. Approximately 50 per cent of Ireland’s 2m dwellings pre-date building regulations and are predominantly of cavity and solid wall construction, the performance of which has not been extensively investigated at present. Although commitment to thermal upgrade/retrofit of existing buildings may increase under future government policies, the poor characterisation …

Development Of Threshold Levels And A Climate-Sensitivity Model Of The Hydrological Regime Of The High-Altitude Catchment Of The Western Himalayas, Pakistan, Muhammad Saifullah, Shiyin Liu, Adnan Ahmad Tahir, Muhammad Zaman, Sajjad Ahmad, Muhammad Adnan, Dianyu Chen, Muhammad Ashraf, Asif Mehmood

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Water shortages in Pakistan are among the most severe in the world, and its water resources are decreasing significantly due to the prevailing hydro-meteorological conditions. We assessed variations in meteorological and hydrological variables using innovative trend analysis (ITA) and traditional trend analysis methods at a practical significance level, which is also of practical interest. We developed threshold levels of hydrological variables and developed a non-parametric climate-sensitivity model of the high-altitude catchment of the western Himalayas. The runoff of Zone I decreased, while the temperature increased and the precipitation increased significantly. In Zone II, the runoff and temperature increased but the …

Next-Generation Rainfall Idf Curves For The Virginian Drainage Area Of Chesapeake Bay, Xixi Wang, Xiaomin Yang, Zhaoyi Cai

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Probability-based intensity-duration-frequency IDF curves are needed but currently lacking for Department of Defense DoD to construct and manage its infrastructure in changing climate. The objectives of this project were to 1 develop an innovative approach for considering rainfall non-stationarity in developing such IDF curves and 2 apply this approach to the state of Virginia. In this regard, the observed data on 15-min rainfall at 57 gauges and the precipitations projected by twelve pairs of Regional Climate Model RCM and Global Circulation Model GCM were used. For a given gauge or watershed, in terms of fitting the empirical exceedance probabilities, a …

Aesthetics, Ethics, And Lose-Lose Dilemmas In The Anthropocen, Adam Liska

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Anthropogenic climate change will cause violence to increase globally, and nonlinear increases in sea level could cause a major escalation in global conflict. After 2100, a 22-meter sea-level rise is estimated here to dislocate two billion people from coastal areas. These impending civilization-changing events require us to again reevaluate our prevalent aesthetic preferences for luxury that produce a significant fraction of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Due to industrial inertia, a central dilemma discussed here is the contradictions between the goals and impacts of aesthetics and ethics. Either we lose our own well-being (a loss of high-emission aesthetics) for the benefit …

Rainwater Harvesting System Scenario Analysis On Runoff Reduction Potential In Surabaya, Indonesia: A Geospatial Analysis For Brantas Hilir Watershed, Putri Sukmahartati

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Global warming has become an environmental concern over the past several decades and its impact on the water cycle is very crucial to the well-being of the human population. In the hydrological cycle, water evaporates by the heat of the sun and atmosphere, where it is accumulated in the atmosphere via clouds and it then falls as rain. With warmer temperatures, more intensive evaporation and downpours occur. In addition, impervious surfaces are increasing as a result of urban development. Those surfaces cause more water to flow faster into open water bodies, creating more extensive flooding, and additionally reducing water quality. …

How Governmental Greenhouse Gas Science Has Been Weathered Through Time And Why It Matters, Christopher Apple

STAR Program Research Presentations

Global consumption of materials and energy is accelerating. The rate of plant and animal species extinction is accelerating. On a finite Earth with a growing population, current consumption cannot continue sustainably. Greenhouse gases (GHGs) tell us an important part of this story. The Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network, managed by scientists at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory, is the largest greenhouse gas analysis network in the world. It has been shaped by scientific questions, stagnant funding despite rises in research costs, and the task of understanding how the Earth system will respond to a changing climate. The Network began by …

Water–Soil–Vegetation Dynamic Interactions In Changing Climate, Xixi Wang, Xuefeng Chu, Tingxi Liu, Xiangju Cheng, Rich Whittecar

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Previous studies of land degradation, topsoil erosion, and hydrologic alteration typically focus on these subjects individually, missing important interrelationships among these important aspects of the Earth's system. However, an understanding of water–soil–vegetation dynamic interactions is needed to develop practical and effective solutions to sustain the globe's eco-environment and grassland agriculture, which depends on grasses, legumes, and other fodder or soil-building crops. This special issue is intended to be a platform for a discussion of the relevant scientific findings based on experimental and/or modeling studies. Its 12 peer-reviewed articles present data, novel analysis/modeling approaches, and convincing results of water–soil–vegetation interactions under …

Predictions Of Ponderosa Pine Resiliency To Climate Change In The Cebolla Canyon Watershed, New Mexico, Breana N. Chavez

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

This project was designed to understand the potential impacts of climate change on soil moisture and the resiliency of ponderosa pine in the forested region of the Cebolla Canyon watershed (Cebolla), located in eastern New Mexico. Much of the watershed is administered as public domain land by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This project aims to help BLM managers understand how climate change is projected to impact ponderosa pine seedling establishment and mature ponderosa pine productivity in Cebolla.

Current and potential future soil moisture regimes in Cebolla were simulated on three hills using HYDRUS-1D. The soil moisture regimes …

Methane Emissions As Energy Reservoir: Context, Scope, Causes And Mitigation Strategies, Xiaoli Chai, David J. Tonjes, Devinder Mahajan

Technology & Society Faculty Publications

Methane (CH4) is now considered a bridge fuel between present fossil (carbon) economy and desired renewables and this energy molecule is projected to play an important role in the global energy mix well beyond 2035. The atmospheric warming potential of CH4 is 28-36 times, when averaged over a 100-year period, that of carbon dioxide (CO2) and this necessitates a close scrutiny of global CH4 emissions inventory. As the second most abundant greenhouse gas (GHG), the annual global CH4 emissions were 645 million metric tons (MMT), accounting for 14.3% of the global anthropogenic GHG emissions. Of this, five key anthropogenic sources: …

Odu Students Work On Nation's First Climate Change Adapted Neighborhood, Jugal Patel

News Items

No abstract provided.

Water At The Centre Of Environmental Issues – Research At The Ucd Dooge Centre For Water Resources Research, Zeinab Bedri, Eva M. Mockler, Michael Bruen, Yaqian Zhao, Pj Purcell, John O'Sullivan, M. Alsaji, Aisling Corkery, Liam Doherty, M. Dzakpasu, M. Martins, A. Rymszewicz, L. Willuwet

Conference papers

Since 1988, the UCD Dooge Centre for Water Resources Research has been conducting research in a wide range of water topics including hydraulics, hydrology, coastal dynamics and wastewater with an emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaboration. This paper presents an overview of this research, both past and present, and provides an outlook to the future research directions of the Centre.

Quantifying Risks Of Climate Change And Sea Level Rise To Naval Station Norfolk (Serdp Rc-1701), Kelly Burks-Copes

October 2, 2013: Quantifying Risks and Moving Forward

No abstract provided.

Agenda: 2012 Energy Justice Conference And Technology Exposition, University Of Colorado Boulder. Center For Energy & Environmental Security, University Of Colorado Boulder. Colorado European Union Center Of Excellence, University Of Colorado Boulder. Presidents Leadership Institute

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Co-sponsored with the Colorado European Union Center of Excellence and the Presidents Leadership Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder.

The ability to harness energy is fundamental to economic and social development. Worldwide, almost 3 billion people have little or no access to beneficial energy resources for cooking, heating, water sanitation, illumination, transportation, or basic mechanical needs. Energy poverty exacerbates ill health and economic hardship, and reduces educational opportunities, particularly for women and children. Specifically, access to efficient and affordable energy services is a prerequisite for achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) relating to poverty eradication.

In response, the UN …

Slides: Appropriate Sustainable Energy Technologies: A Light To The World, Lakshman D. Guruswamy, Jason B. Aamodt, Blake Feamster

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Jason Aamodt, Attorney; Adjunct Professor, University of Tulsa

15 slides

Slides: Unido: Partner For Prosperity, Kandeh K. Yumkella

2012 Energy Justice Conference and Technology Exposition (September 17-18)

Presenter: Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, Chairman, UN Energy; Director General, United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO)

16 slides

Identifying Changes In Climatic Trends And The Fingerprints Of Landuse And Landcover Changes In The High Plains Of The Usa, Denis Mutiibwa

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations and Theses

Human activities such as conversion of natural ecosystem to croplands and urban-centers, deforestation and afforestation impact biophysical properties of land surface such as albedo, energy balance, and surface roughness. Alterations in these properties affect the heat and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmospheric boundary layer. The objectives of this research were; (i) to quantitatively identify the High plains’ regional climate change in temperatures over the period 1895 to 2006, (ii) detect the signatures of anthropogenic forcing of LULC changes on the regional climate change of the High Plains, and (iii) examine the trends in evolving regional latent heat …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 3, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

This report is the third in a series of efforts by students at the Muskie School of Public Service, Community Planning and Development Master’s program, in a core class called “Sustainable Communities.” In this course students seek to understand principles of sustainability and how efforts to implement Sustainability programs can become more successful. The report assembles term papers students completed on particular efforts by municipalities, universities, and other groups to achieve sustainability goals. Students worked on each project in a service learning format with real world clients. They were asked to fashion their papers around lessons learned by other organizations …

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 2, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

The Portland Municipal Climate Change Working Group prepared a report in March 2008 that outlined several recommendations as a commitment by the City to address greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) produced during daily municipal operations. The Municipal Climate Action Plan was written in partnership with Clean Air – Cool Planet and Portland officials, and acknowledges under Recommendation #2 that an employee energy efficiency program would provide significant positive impact on the City’s reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Best practices from three cities show that focus on the greening of City Hall is critical in developing a program that promotes partnerships, community …

Preserving Assets In At-Risk Municipalities: Financial Strategies For Climate Change Adaptation, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

A large share of America's population, businesses and economic activity now occurs in coastal areas. At the same time, during this century many coastal communities are likely to be severely impacted by sea level rise and increased storm surge and tidal flooding.

“What to do” about this vulnerability is the subject of this brief. It is intended to help municipalities identify courses of action and steps they might take toward increasing their resilience, especially regarding financial resources that will need to be allocated toward the various strategies identified.

Sustainable Portland: Implementation Series 1, New England Environmental Finance Center

Climate Change

When the Sustainable Portland Task Force Report was released in November 2007, under the leadership of Mayor Jim Cohen, Portland Councilor Kevin Donoghue had the idea that students at the Muskie School of Public Service might be able to help implement recommendations from the report. It may have helped that Kevin was himself a graduate of the Community Planning and Development Master’s program at the Muskie School, but it was a good idea nevertheless. He approached Professor Sam Merrill in the CPD program, who spoke with the new Mayor Ed Suslovic about a possible partnership between the City and the …

Day 5. Friday, August 15, 2003: Rocky Mountain National Park, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Energy Field Tour 2003 (August 11-16)

1 page.

Contains references.

Agenda: Energy Field Tour 2003, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Energy Field Tour 2003 (August 11-16)

Congressional staff tour held August 11-16, 2003

Summary: Binder of assorted articles, maps, brochures and other materials prepared for participants of the tour

Contents:

MONDAY, AUGUST 11, 2003: BLUE SPRUCE PEAKER PLANT: University of Colorado Natural Resources Law Center : congressional staff tour of Blue Spruce Energy Center / Peggy Duxbury -- 'Power Struggle', National Journal, June 27, 2003 / Margaret Kritz -- 'Calpine's Blue Spruce Energy Center begins commercial operation', Calpine press release, April 17, 2003 -- NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LAB: NREL at a glance -- NREL technologies -- SHOSHONE HYDROELECTRIC PLANT: 'River District Board supports spring Shoshone call …